LETTER: Medical districts could be harmful to Fall River's health

In his April 8 column, Marc Dion frames the issue of the proposed medical districts as one of jobs. However, allowing hospitals and medical facilities to expand into neighborhoods has nothing to do with job creation.

The Herald News, Fall River, MA

Writer

Posted Apr. 12, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 12, 2013 at 12:20 PM

Posted Apr. 12, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 12, 2013 at 12:20 PM

» Social News

In his April 8 column, Marc Dion frames the issue of the proposed medical districts as one of jobs. However, allowing hospitals and medical facilities to expand into neighborhoods has nothing to do with job creation.

If hospitals in Fall River want to expand, they can do what hospitals in every other city have done and that is to grow up instead of out. The reality is that it is cheaper for hospitals to make abutting neighborhoods into parking lots. Parking lots don’t create jobs. The hospitals have ample opportunity to expand and create jobs without destroying neighborhoods.

The medical districts issue is really about democracy. These medical zoning districts were conceived in secrecy by the Flanagan administration and presented to the city council without any public notice or participation by the residents or business owners who would be included in the districts. Indeed, the medical districts are hidden in 65 pages of technical zoning amendments.

Only after the city council voted to move the zoning package to a hearing did the medical districts get discovered and become public.

I have been a city planner for many years, but I have never seen such a wholesale attempt by a city to destroy its own neighborhoods. If adopted, the medical districts would include 19 blocks of residential neighborhoods surrounding Charlton and Saint Anne’s hospitals. These 19 blocks contain 325 residential structures, more than 900 housing units and approximately 2,100 residents. The medical district surrounding PrimaCARE would include 11 blocks of mostly small businesses that would become nonconforming under the ordinance. These businesses create jobs, too.

What disturbs me most about the discussion of medical districts is that many persons consider neighborhood residents expendable. After all, they are only renters or low-income or just in the way. Let’s just move them aside. The truth is that these 2,100 residents call these neighborhoods their home. Many have lived there all of their lives. Some homes have been in the family for generations. Veterans live there; hard-working people live there. They deserve elected leaders who protect them, not expose them to harm. They at least deserve to be at the table when a decision is made to put a target on their backs. They should be told when the city is planning a zoning change that guarantees that a bulldozer will be in their future.

While this may not be an eminent domain taking, the result will be the same. Small people will be forced out of their homes for the benefit of some entity with influence. It is a different process of property confiscation, but it will have the same result.

Some property owners may believe that being bought by a hospital will be their winning lottery ticket when in truth, for most owners, it will result in a slow erosion of property values. Who will want to purchase a home in a medical district when they know that the house next door could be torn down at any time and replaced with a parking lot or with a six-story building 10 feet from the property line? In effect, there will be one buyer for properties in these districts, the hospitals.

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Why should we care? After all, it affects people in another part of the city and doesn’t concern me. Or does it? First, and above all else, it should offend our sense of justice and fairness. Would we want this to happen to us? If it did happen to us, wouldn’t we want others in the community to come to our aid?

Also, this is our city, all of it. A negative action over there affects us here. We are all in this together.

The City Council will be holding a hearing on the medical districts on May 14. State law says that the City Council will have 90 days to make a decision. This is too short a period to deliberate a zoning change that could have such a wide-ranging impact and that we will have to live with for generations.

If medical districts are seen to be a priority by the administration, the process should start over and be conducted as it should have been from the beginning, with careful deliberation, widespread public input and full transparency.